I am happy to announce the publication of AN ADVERSE POSSESION, the third novel in the Alton County Trilogy of mysteries available on Amazon or ordered from your bookstore. Dr. Robert Hartwell returns to Minnesota after years in San Francisco and finds the road to his mineral spring property gated and closed. Cattleman Justin Taylor […]
If you’re looking for revelation, it’s all around you…..
Nothing reveals a person’s character like an argument that lays bare the emotions and underlying values through the choice of words and gestures. An argument is primal and shows who we truly are.
Go to places you think you know well and try to see them as if for the first time. What are their salient details and what stories do those details suggest?
In most if not all novels, the main characters have a backstory, a piece of their history or experience that acts like a gyro to both drive and inhibit them.
Loose Leaf Binder is now a blogroll on my website: fetterlyroad.com. Please visit me there and follow along. Stay well.
Nature and culture have designed us for sophisticated oral communication. To think before we speak. It is still good advice. Radio helps.
My memories of our small-town Decoration Day celebration began with the sale of buddy poppies in the Rexall drug store, the Ben Franklin dime store and other shops. Veterans of World War II sold them to raise money for comrades disabled in conflict. At the age of 10 or 11, I couldn’t explain why I bought one except everyone expected me to. Like going to church, I did it because–well–everyone else did it. It was part of being an American to buy and wear this icon of remembrance and sacrifice.
For many years, we didn’t buy a lot in the stores because it was cheaper to order goods from the Sears-Roebuck catalogue. We did it for the same reason we order books, clothing, cameras, yarn and household good from Amazon.
Now, looking back from a half-century on, I know our differences in ancestry, ethnicity and prejudice blinded us to what we shared in common. Maybe that’s why it was a good Friday. In those three hours, we were of one spirit in reverence for something we held in common even if we refused to recognize it. These days, three hours of publicly shared and reflective silence could help us all see something greater good we share lying just beyond our immediate prejudices and passions.
R. Newell Searle 